That Which We Are
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
Summary: Years after Voyager's return to the Alpha Quadrant, Admiral Kathryn Janeway finds herself questioning whether the goal was worth the effort.


(Disclaimer: In the words of a certain Em Wycedee, "Paramount owns the characters, the franchise, and more of my soul than they should." The immortal poem "Ulysses," which inspired this story and which is quoted in part below, is the work of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and a must-read for anyone who loves the concept of explorer-as-hero. Thanks to Kathleen Speck for dialogue assistance.)  
  
  
That Which We Are  
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring  
  
  
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,  
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!  
  
  
"Coffee?" Kathryn Janeway asked, moving toward what she'd come to think of as her "coffeemaker." The device had begun its existence as a common replicator, but in the decade she had owned it, every flavor of coffee known to the Federation had been added to its repertoire.  
  
"Please," Chakotay said from his place on the couch. "Andorian Mountain blend, Melendran cream." Both coffee and cream were relatively obscure variations, but he was familiar with the capabilities of her office replicator.  
  
"Coming right up." She ordered his beverage, then, after a moment's thought, requested a traditional Columbian roast (black) for herself. Carrying both steaming mugs to the sitting area, she offered him his drink before taking a delicate, sampling sip of her own. Just what she'd expected, but then it always was. She settled down into her armchair, and for a few minutes they sat silently together, sharing the beverage and one another's company in their private, time-honored ritual.  
  
As she sipped, Janeway raised her eyes over the rim of her mug and looked at her companion, really looked at him, as she hadn't done in a long time. He did not seem to note her regard. As so often when he came to her office, his eyes had moved to her window, and the bay beyond it, following the movements of passing ships with small restless flickers of his pupils. The windows of his own little office, and those of the classroom where he taught, afforded him no such view.  
  
From a physical standpoint, the passage of time had been kind to the man she'd selected as her first officer, some twenty years gone. Though Chakotay's short, once-black hair had long ago turned salt-and-pepper (now more salt than pepper), and the lines that crinkled the skin about his eyes and mouth had gotten deeper, few new lines had encroached on the still-handsome countenance, and the slight additional hollowing beneath his cheekbones only accentuated the strong, blunt angles of his face. Beneath the black-and-gray of his uniform, his body still looked fit and powerful: his shoulders as broad as ever, his waist nearly as narrow, the suggestion of muscle still informing the shape of his sleeves. That wasn't all the work of nature, she knew; despite his age (or because of it), he drove himself through a demanding regimen of regular exercise.  
  
Kathryn did not need to look in a mirror to know that the passing years had not been quite as kind to her. She was quite aware that her own golden-brown hair was shot through with white; that her eyes, no longer so deep-blue as they had been, were accented by crow's feet; that her face was perhaps too thin, her cheeks too hollow, to meet some concepts of attractiveness. Though Chakotay had assured her many times that her beauty was undiminished, she suspected his assurances had more to do with his sense of gallantry than with fact. Not that it mattered; Kathryn had never been obsessed with schoolgirl standards of beauty. While she found it satisfying to know that her looks were pleasant for a woman of her years, she was more concerned with her health and level of fitness -- and knew that, thanks to a demanding exercise regimen of her own, she was still strong and wiry, quite capable of "whipping her weight in wildcats" (as a long-ago physical training instructor of hers had once said).  
  
Not that she'd had much need for the ability to whip wildcats, she reflected. Or, for that matter, anything else. Not in a long time.  
  
Chakotay looked away from the window, heavy gray eyebrows quirking upward with amusement, and she knew he had seen her scrutiny of him. With a self-conscious smile, she turned her gaze back to her coffee -- only to realize that he, in his turn, was regarding *her*, a tiny smile of his own on his full-curved lips. After a moment, she said dryly, "A comment, Captain?"  
  
He took another swallow of his beverage before answering. "Just appreciating the view, Admiral."  
  
An eternity ago, at the beginning of their journey on Voyager, she might have pretended to think he was referring to what he'd seen through the window. But they were long past such games now. "Flatterer," she accused, without heat.  
  
He inclined his head. "Not at all."  
  
"How long can you stay?"  
  
"As long as you'll have me. No classes this afternoon." Chakotay sipped his coffee.  
  
"Time off for good behavior?"  
  
"You could say that. And you?"  
  
"Me too. You're my last appointment."  
  
"Ah, saving the best for last." He set his mug down on the transparent surface of her coffee table, and considered her with the steady, serious gaze she knew so well. "So, Kathryn, what's been bothering you?"  
  
She stiffened a little, then mentally cursed, knowing the move would have been imperceptible to almost anyone *but* him. "What makes you think something's been bothering me?" she evaded, cupping her coffee mug in both hands and holding it high, as if she meant to block his view of her face.  
  
"Sell it to someone who's buying, Kathryn," he advised mildly, hunkering forward in his seat and laying a big hand on her knee. He'd learned that trick from her, she thought suddenly, certainly, the not-quite-casual touch that pulled someone's attention irresistibly to the toucher. He'd been a good pupil; the gesture worked as well for him as it always had for her. "You've been, I don't know, nervous, tense, for months now. I thought at first that maybe you'd found out something had happened to one of our crew" -- for everyone who'd served on Voyager, "our crew" had only one meaning -- "and you didn't want to tell me for some reason. But nobody I talked to had heard of anything like that. If there'd been anything wrong with someone in your family, I couldn't imagine why you'd hide it from me, but I checked anyway. Your sister said there hadn't been." Her eyes widened. She hadn't realized he'd be that thorough in his researches; wondered what her sister's exact words had been when the question was raised. "And as far as I can tell, there's not even a hint of a departmental shakeup in Starfleet Sciences. So your job's not at risk." He sketched a thin, not-trying-very-hard-to-be-cheery smile, before his eyes became serious again. "I don't know what's wrong, Kathryn. But I know something is." He squeezed her knee. "You can lie to anyone else -- except maybe Tuvok -- but don't lie to me. What's going on?"  
  
She sighed, temporizing for just a moment longer. "Has anyone ever told you you're awfully pushy?"  
  
"You. Hundreds of times." His gaze was unblinking. "Give."  
  
"All right." She symbolized her surrender by setting the mug down and meeting his gaze. "But I warn you, it's not going to make a lot of sense."  
  
"Kathryn, I spend every day dealing with cadets whose idea of tactics is charging head-on into a fleet of Romulan battle cruisers and firing for all they're worth." He chuckled, a bit ruefully. "Compared to that, you're a fountain of logic."  
  
"Thanks," she said wryly. "I think." That pulled a little more of a smile from him. "Chakotay --"  
  
But it was the unspeakable, unthinkable question, the one no commanding officer should raise, and she discovered that she couldn't quite ask it after all -- not while she was looking right at him, and sitting so close to him, and certainly not while he was touching her. So she pushed herself out of her chair and paced a few steps away from him, her arms folding of their own volition across her abdomen, protecting and steadying her as she turned back to him. "Chakotay," she began again, feeling her stomach tighten with unaccustomed nerves. "Chakotay...do you ever wonder if it was worth it?"  
  
He looked at her for a moment, frowning thoughtfully as if considering her possible meanings, and she wondered if she would have to explain herself further after all, even to this man who knew her so well. Then the frown cleared, and she knew he understood even before his soft words confirmed it. "You mean, bringing Voyager home, don't you?"  
  
"Yes." She kept her own voice low, because she hoped he would not hear the faint tremor in it, and because the admission sounded too much like treason, like blasphemy.  
  
But he did not look shocked, or even disapproving. "Yes," he said simply. "Sometimes I wonder."  
  
The words hit her with a peculiar pang, and yet, she realized, she should not have been surprised to hear them, not from him. After all, Chakotay had gained little from the ship's return to the Alpha Quadrant.  
  
"Don't get me wrong," he said, slowly, as if he were searching for words. "I think we did the right thing. I think we did the necessary thing. I think we had to bring them home if we could -- had to come home if we could." (But of course *he* had not been able to go home, he or most of Voyager's former Maquis, forced by the annexation or destruction of their worlds to make their homes where best they could.) "But sometimes it feels...." He trailed off.  
  
"As if we paid too much," she finished, her throat aching, and he nodded mutely. They were silent for a time, as scenes and faces flooded her mind, many long-gone, all as clear as yesterday: images of men and women wrapped in gloom, doubt, despair. Images of battles, explosions, bleeding and dying officers. "All the fighting, all the struggle --" Durst, Bandera, Ballard, Hogan, Suder, Kaplan, Carey, and more.... "All the death."  
  
Something crumpled in his face at that last, but he only nodded again.  
  
"And for what?" She stalked a few steps further away, the walls suddenly seeming too close, the room too small. "So that we could find some glorious future? Get to some shining Shangri-La?" She wheeled to face him, hands on her hips, snapping the words off as if she were accusing him of something. "Do you know what Tom Paris is doing these days, Chakotay? I'll tell you what he's doing." Outrage rose up in her throat; in the end all Tom's efforts, all his ability, all her own recommendations, had not been enough to see him past his old scandals. (His family connections might have helped, but to his credit he'd refused to seek acceptance on those terms.) "He's a flight instructor."  
  
"I know," Chakotay said softly. "It's a terrible waste of talent."  
  
"B'Elanna." She was pacing now, as the words, the fury, fountained out of her like water from a geyser, driven by heat and pressure. "With the record they left her with, she can't get hired on anywhere. An engineer of her caliber working from commission to commission? It's an outrage! And Seven --" Even in the headquarters of supposedly-enlightened Starfleet, Seven of Nine's dignity had not kept her from being poked and probed as if she were a laboratory animal. In the end she'd fled, God knew where. "It's as if she fell off the face of the galaxy -- hell, it's as if they drove her! Is this what we worked so hard for, Chakotay? Is this the future we wanted to give them?"  
  
But she gave him no time to answer. "And you." Sitting there so quietly, watching her, he was perhaps the very symbol of her frustration. "A man of your ability teaching pap to idiot cadets." Oh, Starfleet had grudgingly promoted Chakotay to captain, but he must know as well as she that they would never give him command, or even let him out of his stifling little pigeonhole, his former outlawry barring him forever from any posting to which his skill and experience might otherwise entitle him. She still heard the whispers, whenever his back was turned: whispers that named him renegade, criminal, traitor, suggested that he was allowed to remain in Starfleet only by favor.  
  
"And me." A bitter taste. "The `hero-captain of Voyager.'" Sarcastically, Kathryn tossed off the phrase she'd heard too many times in the early days of their return. "Kissing ass for high-ranking desk jockeys whose idea of a difficult assignment is figuring out the seating chart for a diplomatic reception." Her mouth twisted, as if she were trying to spit out the bile, and she looked away, out her window. Beyond that transparent pane, the ships and shuttles attached to Headquarters flew back and forth on their endless petty errands, as small and insignificant as insects -- but still *flying*, dammit, those terrible gnats still flying even though her beautiful Voyager had been mothballed, turned into a godawful orbital museum for children and curiosity-seekers. "O brave new world...." The words stuck in her throat.  
  
"Kathryn." Chakotay's voice was low, insistent. "Kathryn, look at me." She turned, and saw him regarding her intently, his dark eyes very serious. "I won't tell you it's not that bad -- even though I think, for a lot of our crew, it isn't." The words reminded her that, when they'd first returned to Earth, there had been some happiness, some satisfying reunions: Tuvok with his family, Sam Wildman with her husband, Harry Kim with his parents (if not with his former sweetheart, who had apparently given up on him almost as soon as Voyager had been lost). But that seemed like a long time ago. Sometimes she wondered cynically if even some of those reunions had soured in the decade since their return.  
  
"But most of what you're talking about has been true for years." There was no reproach in expression or words; only gentle inquiry. "Why does it bother you so much now?"  
  
"I don't know." She shook her head, restlessly. "I don't know, Chakotay. Maybe it's been building for years, and I just didn't want to admit it. We paid so much to come back, all of us. How could I say we didn't get enough for the price? How could I say it wasn't worth it?"  
  
He simply waited.  
  
"But I tell you, any more, every time I see a starship taking off, I --" Something in her throat wouldn't let her finish the sentence.  
  
He came to his feet then, in a movement that, if not as swift as it might once have been, still had its old grace. Then he was at her side, his long fingers closing warmly over her shoulder. "Kathryn," he asked softly, "what do you want?"  
  
"Chakotay?" she said uncertainly.  
  
From a foot away, his scrutiny was sympathetic, concerned, and inescapable. "What do you want? What would make it worth it to you, Kathryn?"  
  
"I don't --" He shook his head, and she realized that wasn't true. She did know. Meeting his gaze, she told him quietly, "If we could do something worth doing again. I can't believe we came this far so that Tom could be stuck on a planet, you could be stuck in a classroom, and I could be stuck in this office. Dammit, this isn't where we belong, and it isn't what we should be doing. We're better than this." Her voice -- almost -- cracked. "All of us."  
  
"What, then?" His eyes never left hers.  
  
"We need to get out." The words tumbled from her, as if propelled by the quickening beat of her heart, and they were more real and true than anything she'd said in a long time. "I need to get out. Out of this office, out of this job, off of this planet. Now, Chakotay," she said urgently. "Before we're too old. Before it stops mattering any more. We have to get out."  
  
Something lit up in his eyes, some responsive spark. "You mean, get Starfleet to give you another ship?"  
  
"Maybe." She was thinking rapidly. "Or maybe not. I don't think Starfleet would give us what we really want. Remember how I asked for a field posting a few years after we came back? They told me they didn't want to risk losing Janeway-the-legend." The snort escaped automatically; that was all the more good fame had done her! "I could ask again, but I'm really afraid that, even if I *could* talk them into sending me out, I'd just end up patrolling some nice, safe route in known space." And, most likely, without those others who, like her, deserved and needed better. "We need to see if there's another way."  
  
"Yes." He was obviously considering the question.  
  
"If we could get a ship of our own -- Chakotay!" The revelation exploded through her like a burst of pure energy. Such a simple solution, yet she, daughter as well as officer of Starfleet, had never entertained the possibility before, never even let the thought arise. "That's it. A ship of our own."  
  
He looked at her, startled, a little dazed. "How?"  
  
"How does anyone do it?" She felt a smile pulling at her lips. //So very simple.// "We'll buy one."  
  
"*What?*" he asked, in plain disbelief.  
  
"We'll buy one!" She did smile then, partly at his stunned expression, partly just with pleasure. Oh, she could do this. She *would* do this. She was Kathryn Janeway, scientist, explorer, captain of Voyager, and if Starfleet chose to deny those aspects of her soul, so much the worse for Starfleet; she would not be chained to trivial duties like some medieval chattel. "I've been in the service 40 years now, long enough to build up a pretty respectable pension. I can take it now, in a lump sum. *And* I've never spent most of the credits I got for the ten years on Voyager. *And* I had savings before that, and a little bit of an inheritance from my father. Do you think all that might add up to the price of a small ship?"  
  
His eyes searched her face intently, and he said at last, "You're serious."  
  
"Of course I'm serious."  
  
He smiled slowly, taking the thought in. "Interesting. And what will we do with this ship when we have it?"  
  
"Go out there," she said, anticipating it with an eagerness she hadn't known in a long time. "Explore." That had used to be what she loved about Starfleet, but somehow she had lost it, in all these years locked into the petty bureaucratic side of things. Or maybe Starfleet had lost it; she didn't know. She would have it back, with or without them. "Maybe see some of the things between here and Delta that we missed because we took a shortcut home. Oh, Chakotay" -- and she gripped his hand, excitement surging -- "we'd be *alive* again. Doing things that matter. Answering to ourselves."  
  
He gripped back. "It sounds wonderful to me, Kathryn." His smile widened. "Actually, I have a few credits set aside myself. Maybe we can get a bigger ship."  
  
"And bring Tom and B'Elanna aboard as our pilot and engineer. Harry as operations chief --"  
  
Chakotay raised a hand. "Harry may not want to leave the border patrol," he pointed out.  
  
"That's true," she conceded, her enthusiasm not dimming. "And I guess that's not a dull life. But we can still ask him. We can ask Tuvok, too, but I don't know if he'll come. He might not want to leave his family."  
  
"I don't know," Chakotay disagreed mildly. "The last time we saw him, he seemed a little bored with being on the Vulcan Council. He might welcome a break. And besides, I don't think there are too many places he wouldn't follow you."  
  
She smiled a little at the latter assertion, knowing it was true. Whether or not it was logical for him to be so, her old friend was one of the most loyal beings in the universe. "Could be. And, Chakotay --"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"There has to be somebody, somewhere, who knows where Seven is. For something like this, Chakotay, maybe she'll come back to us."  
  
"I hope so," he said quietly. "I've worried about her."  
  
She squeezed his shoulder, understanding. "So have I, Chakotay." A sudden thought amused her. "They'll think we're crazy, you know," she said, eyes sparkling.  
  
He blinked. "Who?"  
  
"Starfleet. Hell, everyone. Mature, respectable officers like ourselves leaving our mature, respectable jobs to go flitting around the quadrant like a couple of young bucks."  
  
His lips quirked. "They probably will. Does it matter?"  
  
"Not a bit." She grinned again. "Want to work on our letters of resignation this afternoon?"  
  
He sketched a bow. "At your command, Admiral."  
  
The grin grew wider. "`Admiral' will do in a crunch," she said, feeling exultation flooding her. "But I prefer `Captain.'"  
  
  
....Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'  
We are not now that strength which in old days  
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;  
One equal temper of heroic hearts,  
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.  
  
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson  
"Ulysses" 


End file.
